Baltimore Washington Eye Center, Maryland

Monday, September 14, 2015

The NIH National
Institute on Aging,
estimates that more than 5 million people may have Alzheimer Disease.
Developing better methods of intervention to detect, diagnose and treat
Alzheimer’s Disease is an important national healthcare priority.

According to researchers reporting in Investigative
Ophthalmology & Vision Science a subtle change in eye movements may provide a useful diagnostic tool
for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. In general, eye movements
follow a reproducible pattern during normal reading. Each eye movement ends up
in a fixation point, which allows the brain to process the incoming information
and to program the following movements. The researchers found that Alzheimer’s Disease
(AD) produces eye movement abnormalities and disturbances in reading with those
patients with early AD displaying abnormal fixation patterns. So we now know that evaluation of eye
movement behavior during reading might provide a useful tool for a more precise
early diagnosis of AD and for monitoring the progress or stability of Alzheimer’s
Disease.